Chemical structure rendering software is widely used by research and educational institutions to depict chemical structures and chemical reactions of interest. Unlike chemical formulas or chemical names, structural formulas provide a graphical representation of a molecular structure. A graphical chemical structure representation is capable of indicating the arrangements of atoms in a way that a chemical formula cannot.
Current methods for drawing and editing representations of chemical structures on a computer require a user to perform many repetitive tasks in order to manually create structures using a set of software “tools” that serve similar functions as the physical drawing tools used to create a drawing on paper. For example, these methods utilize mouse-driven or touchpad-based commands that include pointing and clicking on displayed menu items and/or on portions of the chemical structure representation in a graphical user interface. Existing chemical structure rendering applications for handheld electronic devices, e.g., tablet computers and smartphones, use this same manual paradigm. These applications can be clumsy when attempting to draw complex chemical structures that include many bonds and elements, particularly on small touchscreen devices. There is a need for more efficient and intuitive methods for drawing and editing representations of chemical structures.